ABSTRACT
Perversity, the dumping ground at the turn of the century for women who confounded norms of sex, gender, and sexuality, was a restive place from which proprietary norms continued to be disturbed, since labeling degenerates did not seem to make them go away. Degeneracy, relegated to the category of “wrong,” became a necessary boundary: one could not otherwise fully comprehend “right.” The women of Howard’s nightmare were sexual and masculine in behavior, dress, and attitude. They crossed boundaried genders and assailed his assumptions of propriety. He most likely would have preferred to dispel them from humanity altogether than be subjected to their difference, but he marked himself indelibly in relation to them when he declared their lesser position. In effect, they clamored harder to be looked at, to be evaluated, and to be discussed. The varieties of women in cross-dress-from male impersonators to butch lesbians to passing women-have continued to provoke curiosity and even dread as they have tweaked (and sometimes wrenched) proprietary relations of sex, gender, and sexuality. Research on women’s cross-dressing has been characterized by pockets of activity which have hummed more loudly and more harmoniously recently, but from separate, not yet integrated, spheres. Many of us writing have found ourselves at the “beginning” again, pulling in pieces of information and trajectories of thought from disparate places in order to lay some groundwork for further consideration. The work has been exciting, but frustrating because kneejerk responses and generalizations continue to be real risks. None the less, valuable research has been done on women’s cross-dressing in such areas as women who have performed on stage in cross-dress (e.g. research by Lisa
Merrill 1985. Laurence Senelick 1982), passing women (Allan Berube 1979, Julie Wheelwright 1989), lesbian theories (Judith Butler 1991, Carole-Anne Tyler 1991), lesbian popular culture (JoAnn Loulan 1990, Joan Nestle 1987), feminist performance theories (Sue-Ellen Case 1990, Kate Davy 1989, Jill Dolan 1988), and sociology and anthropology (Holly Devor 1989). One may be struck by the variety of areas within the field of study, but research on men’s crossdressing far exceeds that on women’s in quantity, and while quantifying difference in this way sets a minefield, my point is that women’s cross-dressing is comparatively underexplored.
